Through Different Eyes
by Emmeebee
Summary: Many of Astoria Greengrass' pureblood acquaintances seem particularly interested in talking about who she is as a person, but the narratives they spin about her life are so off base that it's like they aren't even trying to find out the truth. Minor background Drastoria.


A/N: While the pairing is epilogue complaint, I altered the timeline for the purposes of this fic.

Hogwarts Writing Club Competition – prompt: contain (word count: 628)

The Second Competition That Must Not Be Named

* * *

They watch her and titter and imagine they know what her pretty little mind contains. Thoughts might be valued at a penny apiece, but they reconstruct hers for free before pawning their versions off as the real ones, as if they're the ultimate authority on her while she's an airheaded little girl with no idea of how her own mind works. Despite her ancestry, they take her at face value, refusing to waste their brainpower on her even as they constantly slander her.

o-o-o

 _Five years old_

As they watch the child play, they note that she seems more interested in exploring the thickets and briars surrounding the property than in playing with the puzzles and books they gave her for her birthday. One woman snidely remarks that she would never consider letting _her_ daughter sully herself by behaving that way in public, and they all quietly agree. The words etched between the lines of their conversation silently express that she must not be smart enough or patient enough to do anything more intellectually taxing.

(In truth, the girl likes the books and puzzles and dolls and sketchbooks too; she just loves the wilderness of the outside world more.)

o-o-o

 _Eleven years old_

No one is surprised when she is sorted into Slytherin; it runs in the family, after all, and where else would a highborn pureblood who isn't smart enough for the eagles go?

(Actually, The Sorting Hat considered putting her in Hufflepuff for her diligence and optimism or Ravenclaw for her intelligence, and only put her in Slytherin because of how shrewd it found her to be.)

o-o-o

 _Fifteen years old_

They constantly compare her to her older sister and invariably find her wanting. With such an effortlessly gorgeous sister, how, they ask, could she wind up that irrevocably plain? It's not that any of them find her _un_ attractive, necessarily, but rather that none of them find her _actually_ attractive. To them, she's just… there.

(Her sister's beauty isn't as natural as they think, and her lack of it doesn't bother either of them one bit, so both girls just roll their eyes and giggle at how out of touch the others seem to them.)

o-o-o

 _Seventeen years old_

Their voices are coloured with bitterness as they insist that, although she thinks she's perfect, she wouldn't have made it through the war alive if it weren't for her family name.

(She is still optimistic, but she knows nobody's perfect. And, while she will never be an eager warrior, she has received more than enough private tutoring to hold her own in a fight.)

o-o-o

 _Twenty-seven years old_

When her engagement is announced, they snicker and tell one another that she only accepted his proposal because of some foolish, dim-witted belief that there was still money and power to be had through an association with _that_ family's name. They hadn't expected the little girl who'd once foraged around in bushes to turn out to be such a gold-digger, but they conclude that her silliness, at least, has remained intact throughout the years.

(Unbeknownst to them, it took a while for him to lower his defences enough to trust her, and even longer for her to lower hers enough to trust him, but, eventually, she fell in unexpected but deep love with him.)

o-o-o

It's as if they think they could chronicle her life with their knowledge alone, not realising that their depiction of her would be more of a fictional side character than an actual human being. They watch her, but they have no real idea what her sly and cunning mind might contain.

Meanwhile, Astoria simply sits with her sister and her fiancé, where she laughs and rolls her eyes and pretends the gossipers don't exist.


End file.
